Not losing accuracy is probably related to the high friendly fire problem. Maybe they just have no awareness of any other man than their target?

Maybe we need to test the effectiveness of hastati pila in different formation depths. Notice how hastati etc can throw their pila in deep formation at point blank range with 0 friendly kills and yet archers 3 ranks deep firing at medium range can kill 10 or more in the same number of volleys?

I've had 2 units of cretan archers 3 deep formation standing just on the wall side of a sapping point for a city assault. When the wall went down, they started firing on the defenders while I went and managed another section of the wall. When I came backa couple minutes later, there was only ~30 left in each unit from 80. All friendly fire. Archers are majorly screwed up in RTW. Not only are they so retarded that they just wipe themselves and other units out, but the arrows also seem to have very flat trajectories from what I have seen.

I can understand friendly fire in the second half of the missile trajectory but to have them shoot a man standing right in front of them is just plain rediculous.

I no longer take archers in my armies. They require too much micro management to avoid friendly fire making them too much of a liability and that's put a big negative on my overall enjoyment of the game.